


Of Masks and Mirrors

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Thief (Video Game Original Series), Thief (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 04:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12522756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: No one's too sure what counts as heresy these days. Six months have passed since the events at Soulforge Cathedral and the City is still recovering. Karras has left his mark, not only on the City's streets and sewers, but on Garrett too, and he's not the only one.





	Of Masks and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Writers Anonymous One-Word Prompt Challenge on FFN. My word was 'mirror'. Thanks go to tafferling for betaing.
> 
> Comments of all kinds are hugely appreciated. I particularly value constructive criticism. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> I have fan-art and it's amazing. Thank you so much to Hero_Thief (AKA Aubrey), who has made me a stunning piece of artwork which I adore. Go check out Aubrey's Tumblr for more.
> 
> http://socially-awkward-supervillian.tumblr.com/post/167135081626/this-is-fanart-for-a-really-good-thief-fic-about

**Of Masks and Mirrors**

 

The children have come creeping back. Garrett can see three of them, combing through the deposits of silt and muck left by the river at low-tide, while another -- too young or stunted to be of any use -- keeps watch. They'd vanished during the months that Sheriff Truart had held the City in his grip, hunting down criminals and beggars alike, but no one knows the City's labyrinthine sewage system better than its unwanted children. They know how to hide.

They're still nervous, though, and no surprise, given they work in the shadow of Soulforge Cathedral. With the river in full ebb, its vast off-flow pipe emerges from the concrete like the nub of an exposed vertebra. It's wide enough a man could crawl up it -- or down it -- and the children give it a wide berth.

The stories about what happened at Soulforge have already started to spread. No one could have failed to notice the shift in the air, as if the smog that hangs over the City on sweltering days has eased a little. There's something in the air, and it's not the chemical stink of burning hair, or the dawn-chorus scream of factory whistles calling the workers in for their toil. Something's changed.

The lights in Soulforge still burn. No one has gone in there yet. The Hammerites, reasserting themselves as the True Followers of the Builder, are still debating amongst themselves whether they should raze it to the ground to stop anyone from following in Karras's footsteps. Might be for the best.

Garrett hates coming down here, and it's not just because of Soulforge. He wouldn't come down this way at all if it wasn't for the fence he knows, who forges paintings in a burnt-out factory with a roof open to the sky.

It's the kids, how they don't seem quite human, swarming like flocks of gulls across the flats, fighting over a treasure until one wins out and the other slinks away or lies prone in the mud. Children can be vicious in a way that most adults are not. Didn't he learn that first-hand?

They've found something. There's a glorious whoop as one of them bends over something in the muck. A scrabble breaks out, a wrestling match that could be playful or savage or something in between.

The bigger boy wins out and the other boy backs away, watching resentfully. He's skinny, with pallid unhealthy skin and matted black hair falling into eyes filled with resentment. Too small, too slight, to hold his own.

One of the weak ones.

Something tightens around Garrett's heart, the old dangerous memories he keeps hidden behind his walls -- one of the most valuable lessons the Keepers ever taught him was how to lock away pain.

A startled cry draws his attention back to the bigger boy. He's scrambling backwards from whatever it is they've found in genuine fear. He shoves himself to his feet so fast he slips in the mud, then recovers and sprints away.

The smaller boy rises to a crouch, staring after him in confusion. Then his gaze darts to the spot in the mud. He shuffles forwards, sidling towards the find as if there's no danger if he approaches it from the side.

Poor kid. He's not that bright. He really won't last long.

He's not brave either. He bends over, and then he too flees.

And now Garrett's curiosity has been piqued. He ducks under the railings and drops down onto the bank. The smell is earthy, faecal matter and rotting fish, and it grows stronger as he moves towards the find. He focuses in on the spot, drawing his walls up tighter, and even so the sensation of the mud sucking at his boots is too powerful, and he might almost be back there, locked in the 'then', with mud slick between his toes, and the freezing kiss of the water around his ankles. He might almost be a boy again.

The children watch him warily, circling closer but keeping their distance. One of them squats to pick up a stone.

In the mud, there's the glint of gold. It makes his mouth dry. He knows the lie of that too-yellow shine too well: nothing so priceless should be allowed to look so cheap. Too much to hope it's jewellery, some ancient, long-lost coronet of battered gold. Gold is gold, and these kids'll know the shine of it too, and there's only one reason he can think of why the sight of it would make them run.

He drops to one knee in the muck, and instantly the damp soaks through to his skin. The evil stink of the mud rises up as he spits on the gleam of gold in the mud and swipes at it with his cloak.

He knows what it is, what it has to be, even before he recognises a fat cheek. Rosebud lips. The sightless moulded eye. Its mechanical eye is still hidden beneath the mud.

His mouth tightens.

It's one of Father Karras's children.

One of the cherubs, those creepy prancing childlike monstrosities, like something out of a painting. He wipes away more of the mud, sees the first gleam of green from its enamelled eye. It's dull and lifeless but as he claws away the mud, the eye flickers bright green. The eye focuses in on him with a clicking sound, as if something is blocking the mechanism, but it's working. The cherub is not quite dead.

His shudder is involuntary and visceral. The itch in his empty eye socket intensifies, until he has to clench his filthy hands in the folds of his cloak to stop himself from reaching up under the patch, to scratch and scratch and _scratch_ until the itch leaves him alone. He uses his own mechanical eye as little as possible these days. Only when he needs it for a job.

There's no such thing as a gift freely given.

The first time he ever met Karras he'd been broken, and at the time he'd thought himself beyond repair. It had been straight after his escape from Constantine's mansion, and he was still shivering and in agony, terrified at how close he'd come to death. Even so, maybe he'd seen something in Karras's eyes, that first hint of madness, but he'd been close to the edge himself -- no, who was he kidding, he'd been tipped right over it -- and it had been all Garrett could do to keep himself from grasping at Karras's sleeve, and babbling his thanks, how grateful he was, how he'd do anything.

It shamed him afterwards -- gratitude of any kind never did come easy for him -- and the next time they met, after he'd defeated the Trickster, and he received his mechanical eye, the pat on the head from the Hammerites for being such a _good_ little puppy, he'd been cooler. Colder. Letting the fury worm its way back in, because he was safer that way.

Karras had been... kind. There'd been a gentleness to him that Garrett had never expected from anyone, especially a Hammerite. He'd seemed almost as grateful to Garrett for the opportunity to test his skill as Garrett was to be put back together again.

Funny thing, Garrett had been the same sort of gentle when he'd lost his virginity. The first girl who'd ever let him, and he'd been grateful then too. Grateful and petrified that if he was anything but gentle she'd decide to stop letting him.

So he was Father Karras's first? Now, isn't that a sickening thought?

He levers the child up from the reeking mud, which doesn't want to give up its prize to an encroaching thief. Garrett isn't sure he wants it either, but gold is gold. There's a collector's market for Mechanist gear -- a small and painfully private one, leery of how hard the Hammerites have come crashing down on what remains of the Mechanist Order. He can't pass this up.

It clings to his arm like a baby monkey, a soft trilling hum emerging from its chest. At least these little ones don't speak, because if the fervent declaration of 'Praise Karras' came out of the little cherub's voicebox he's not sure he'd be able to stop himself from throwing it into the river.

He's being watched. Resentfully. The children, the _real_ children, would have gotten over their fear in time and slunk back to claim their prize, because that's what hungry children do.

A stone skitters off the mud less than a yard away. The boy's a good shot, but not good enough... Or maybe he's just right. The stone hit close enough to make Garrett wary, but not so close to piss him off enough to go after them.

More of the kids have gathered now. A small army of them, in the lee of the wall. They're motionless, the only movement the boy stooping to pick up another stone. Unease scratches at his spine.

"Sorry, kids," he says. "Finders keepers."

The servant shifts under his arm, the movement enough to startle him. A faint trilling as if it responds to his voice, and it makes him wish he hadn't spoken.

 

***

 

She's waiting for him. He spots her straight away, a shadow on the corner of Whitlow Street and Oystergate Walk, lurking in a handy little nook Garrett's had cause to use himself once or twice. She's a suspicious thing in a neighbourhood filled with suspicious things. Edgy and ill-at-ease in an old greatcoat that's seen better days, with the hood pulled up and her hands buried in pockets deep enough to hide an arsenal of weapons. She looks like a child wearing her father's clothes. There's a fullness to her features that no one in the City has, especially these days. Karras may be gone, but many of the factories he raised still work. The Hammerites were quick to repurpose them, burning their coal and stoking their boilers, pumping their poison out into the City.

She's Pagan, one of the Woodsie folk, and when he passes by her hiding place with the cherub hidden beneath his cloak, she falls into step behind him. But she's too close behind, too clumsy. She doesn't know what she's doing.

He could lead her a merry chase, but there seems little point. Most likely they already know where he lives, the tenement, at least, if not his exact apartment.

He's going to have to move. Again.

Garrett leads her down an alley where the crackling sparks of the streetlamps do not reach. Anyone with any sense would have skirted around, watched and waited for him to emerge from the mouth of the alley.

She follows him. Her footsteps slow a little; she's cautious, but unafraid.

He sets the cherub down gently on the stones, hand moving to the dagger in his boot. He draws it free, and waits until she's passed him and it's his turn to fall into step behind her.

Too close behind.

He walks in step with her, close as her shadow. She doesn't hear him until it's too late, and he wraps his arm around her throat, clamps his hand over her mouth. She cries out, the sound muffled against the sweating palm of his hand, until the kiss of the dagger at her throat registers and she goes still.

He brings his mouth close to her ear. The scent of her fills his world, wet leaves and peat, rain and lavender and roses clinging to her hair. "I don't like people following me."

She jerks her head away from the point of the dagger.

"I'm going to drop my hand now," he tells her. "Screaming would be a very bad idea."

"Tricksy sneak-thief," she hisses the moment he drops his hand. He rolls his eye upwards, pricks the dagger against her throat.

Why can't these people just leave him alone?

"Why were you following me?"

"I bes bringing you something."

_Yeah, I bet you are._

He shifts his grip, uses his bodyweight to pin her against the wall. Keeping the dagger tight against her throat, he runs his free hand over her body -- waist, hips, backside. She growls. There's fear in the sound, and Garrett feels a flash of guilt that he quickly quashes. She's the one that followed him. If she's scared, she's right to be. Maybe next time they'll think twice.

"Don't worry, you're not my type," he tells her, and she goes still, lets him frisk her.

She has a hunting knife at her belt, an ugly thing designed for ripping out an animal's guts. He takes it, slips it into his own belt. Nothing else. Nothing that can be described as a weapon anyway, only a stick in the pocket of her greatcoat, which he goes to throw away, only to be stayed by her gasp of horror. She flinches and for a moment he's certain she's going to fight him despite the knife at her throat.

"No," she says. "Please."

Garrett hesitates, then eases the knife from her throat and steps away. She's still for a moment, then turns, her movements slow, cautious. Her hand rises to her neck, finding the place where the blade nicked her skin. She glances along the alley, then slyly at him, her gaze flitting to the eyepatch. Garrett is torn between the longing to turn his head to the side to hide his missing eye, and the urge to lift the patch and step closer, to let her see exactly what was done to him. He does neither.

"She woulds have wanted you to have it," she says. There's hesitancy in her voice, so whatever her mission here, she's not certain it's the right thing to do.

"'She'. You mean Viktoria." He wants to shove her back against the wall, to spit in her face that the only thing that bitch of a wood-nymph could give him that he'd be interested in would be his eye back, and not like _that's_ ever going to happen. The words catch in his chest. Instead, he gives a soft bitter little exhalation. "Not interested."

_Chase the dangling carrot, tricksy little manfool._

The Pagan glares at him. Clearly he's not paid her little mistress enough respect. Because to her and all her kind he's the bastard who got her mistress killed. It's his fault, all of it, and never mind he tried to stop Viktoria from going after Karras. Never mind that _her_ plan ended in chaos and death and slaughter, and his... Well, they're all still alive, aren't they? Thanks to him.

Good thing he knows better than to expect a little gratitude, otherwise he might start feeling disillusioned.

"She bes wanting you to have it," she hisses.

"Viktoria's dead and gone. She doesn't want anything any more."

Her eyes flare wide with rage.

His jaw clenches. " _Why?_ "

"For remembrances."

"For--" The words catch in his throat. His grip tightens around the stick, and he brings it up, studies it. It's nothing, just a cutting from a tree, a length of dead wood, naked as a tree in winter. And then he realises. "This is her? This is..." _What's left of her._

The walls he's built threaten to close in. Viktoria whom he thought he hated, whom he _knew_ he hated, chipping at his defences again. Anger and sorrow tangle so tight he's not sure he'll ever be able to unpick the threads, to figure out where one ends and the other begins.

_I don't want it,_ he wants to say, but he can't speak. He's been talking less lately. It makes him think of the early days when he left the Keepers, never quite knowing how they'd react to his betrayal. He didn't speak to another living soul for days, weeks, at a time. The silence closed in around him like a cloak, stifling him, until speaking almost hurt, like tiny hands had stitched his throat shut, held his tongue clamped tight.

The Pagan's eyes have turned his way, not quite so hateful now. She shifts from foot to foot, because she's delivered her message, and now she wants to be free of him, free of the stone and metal of the City, but she's waiting for him to speak, to offer some mark of respect for Viktoria. Like he owes her that.

And maybe he does. No matter what she did to him, they'd been allies for a while. They'd fought for a common goal. And as much as it pains him to admit it, they'd worked well together.

He needs to say something. The Pagan is waiting, and if he doesn't speak, maybe he'll never be able to get rid of her. He leans closer, and she tenses, her gaze flitting from his one good eye to the darkness of the patch, as she waits for him to speak. To pay his respects.

Garrett takes a breath. "How'd you find me?"

 

***

 

In his apartment, he locks the door and checks the window before he dumps the cherub. The light in its eye has died. He shrugs off his cloak and slumps down, turning the stick in his hands. He rakes a hand through his hair, down over his forehead. His fingers snag on the patch, which he rips off. Even extinguished, the cherub's eye catches what little light there is and reflects it back at him. Itâ€™s dead, but it feels like it's watching him.

There's silence in his apartment, a brief snatch of peace that he finds disconcerting. He throws the stick aside -- he'll burn it, he thinks, or throw it in the river and let the tide carry it out to sea -- and lights the gas light over the fireplace. The light gutters, casting a yellowish pall over the murky floral wallpaper, darkened by decades of smog and soot and the smoking habits of countless other tenants before him. The gas flame glints in the cherub's eye as Garrett approaches it. He traces his thumb over the other socket, the empty one, his mouth twisting.

Then he crosses to the mantel where he keeps his eye in a box marked with the holy symbol of the hammer. He snaps the lid open and plucks the eye from its nestling cushion. He lifts his slack eyelid and slips the mechanical eye into the socket, tugs up the lower lid, and waits for a moment, thinking that this time he's left it too long, that the connections will have degraded and the eye will no longer work. He feels the connection as a twitch in the back of the socket, as a kind of fuzzing in his skull, which always reminds him of Karras's voice. Like a tiny shard of Father Karras lives on inside his head.

He opens his eyes, exhales a little at the return to binocular vision. And he stamps down hard on the treacherous twinge of instinctive gratitude that's rising up.

There's no such thing as a gift freely given.

He fetches his tools and sits down at the table, dragging the cherub closer. It'll be worth more if he can get it working.

It's not just the gas light he can see reflected in the cherub's golden carapace. He can see his own mechanical eye too, the jewelled glint of it in the shadowy crevice of his eye. Green, like a newly budding shoot. He clamps down on the painful sensation squirming in his chest without taking the time to study it, to figure out whether it's grief or anger or something else. Whatever it is, it's painful, and he raises his walls again. Closes himself off.

And sets to work.

 

 

***

 

It was too much to hope the Hammerites might have been wiped out along with the Mechanists. Instead they came back roaring in all their self-important, saliva-flecked fervour, unbending as steel. They denounced Karras as a heretic -- well, naturally, and never mind he had been one of their number, once feted for his ingenuity, his unabashed greed for knowledge and the need to create.

It made for interesting watching though. Fascinating really, watching them try to figure out how much of what Karras had built ought to be ripped down, like the newfangled public conveniences near the bearpits in Newmarket. Since the old facilities had been little more than holes in a board positioned over sluggishly moving water, and the Hammerites, holy order or not, had to shit like everyone else, the flushing toilets stayed.

So every time Garrett uses the communal facilities in Newmarket when his tenement's cesspit has backed up, which happens all the time now that there are no servants keeping the Mechanist-built section of the sewers clean, he has to pass under the relief of Father Karras, whose stern visage has been moulded into the stone lintel above the door.

The busiest shithouse in the City: it's Karras's last major achievement and one that'll still be around long after they're all dead and gone. Somehow Garrett suspects it's not the legacy Karras would have wanted. Still it seems appropriate, considering what a monstrous turd the bastard turned out to be.

He feels like Karras is watching him while he takes a piss, and that voice, that demented voice, seems to echo in the constant sound of flushing water: _What hast thou built, Garrett?_

What hast thou built, Garrett? Good question. Sometimes he wonders too.

Because as much as he tells himself that he's doing okay, that he has a home, a roof over his head, he's still here, alone, in this shithole of an apartment in a tenement with corridors that stink of boiling cabbage and cat piss, where he can't sleep at night because the apartment next door is crammed with an extended family and numberless screaming children. Good thing the life of a thief is mostly a nocturnal one.

And he keeps telling himself after every big job that he'll put a little aside, start his savings pot so he can get around to retiring in style. And sometimes he really does stash away a few coins, but the pot never lasts for long. There's always something that seems important enough to chip into the pot. Just a few coins: he'll pay them right back, first chance he gets, and before he knows it, the pot's gone and he has to start all over again.

Food's the trouble. He never stints on food. He can't seem to pass a stall in the market without a reproachful growl of hunger from his belly, even if he ate less than an hour ago. Slabs of marbled beef on the butchers' stalls, pots of steamed whelks from the fish-stall, doused with vinegar and chewy to the bite. Steamed puddings and pies stuffed with spiced burrick meat. Roasted chestnuts and apples dipped in gleaming toffee in winter, and in summer flavoured ices so cold it makes his forehead ache.

So much food, a glut of it, and it's a habit he can't seem to break, because he knows only too well what it's like to not have enough. It wouldn't be so bad if he ate it all -- or maybe not: couldn't do his job if he was the size of Heartless Perry -- but so often he takes a couple of bites, then sets it aside for later. Just in case. It makes him feel like a squirrel, and he knows there'll never be a later, because he's passed another market-stall and bought more food, and there's no sense in eating stale leftovers when there's fresh food right there, begging to be eaten.

Food never lasts forever, and neither does coin. Food rots and spoils, and coin slips away, whether frittered on worthless crap or the staff of life. How much of his hard-earned coin does he waste on food that never gets eaten?

He'd give it away, even though charity goes against his nature, but the half-starved street-rats know better than to accept such a gift. Food given to rats is always poisoned.

No such thing as a gift freely given.

 

***

 

The apartment might be a shithole, but he likes it. The location is good, right on the corner, with a fine view of both Lapwing Street and Tattersley Stride, and there's a window-seat where he can sit and drink his beer, watch the world passing and keep half an eye out for anyone who might be coming for him. Half an eye is all he can spare these days.

There's a pieceworker who lives in the tenement opposite. When it starts to grow dark, she sits by the window and works by the sparks of the street-light. She's married, or as good as, and her husband looks like a stevedore, big enough to grind Garrett's head into a smear on the flagstones, but she's pretty, too, and sometimes when he hasn't got anything planned he'll sit on his window seat and watch her bent over her work. Clever hands, just like his. Maybe she could have been a fine thief in another life.

He's going to have to move on. No choice really, not now the Pagans have found him, but he's known it was coming for a while now. Sheriff Truart's unsustainable crime-free paradise is crumbling. So far Garrett's managed to keep himself clear of the warfare as the old gangs reassert themselves, but word is a new guild's moved into the Downwinders' old headquarters, and once the slaughter's settled down, it won't be long before they're demanding to know why he hasn't paid his tribute. Just like old times.

The stevedore's back early from the tavern. Drunk to hell, and by all rights he should be a bastard, returning home to beat seven kinds of hell out of his lovely wife, but instead he's the sort of bastard who gets sentimental when he's in his cups, who no doubt had 'Thou Shalt Not Hit Women' beaten into him by his father's fists.

Not a lesson anyone ever took the trouble to teach Garrett.

A scream from next door shatters the unnatural silence, and something -- a vase perhaps? -- crashes against the wall. He counts quietly under his breath -- three, two, one -- and the children next door begin to scream on cue. Garrett drops his head back and closes his eyes.

He's really going to miss this place.

 

***

 

He sells the cherub.

The fence's basement is a maze of stacked shelves and boxes, and an itch on the back of Garrett's neck warns him the place is rigged with booby-traps. The light of the gas lantern crawls over the shelving unit, glinting on limbs enamelled with topaz and sapphire. The faces of servants leer down at him from the shelves.

The fence's eyes light up with avarice the moment he sees the cherub, and he jerks back when it turns its head to regard him, a barely audible clicking whirr in its chest. He shoots a glance at Garrett, who's lounging against the shelves, his mechanical eye catching the light beneath his hood. He wouldn't normally use it for something like this, but he has a feeling the reminder of who he is might help with the negotiations. He has a certain... reputation.

"Son-of-a-taffing-whore," the fence says. "It's working."

"Told you. How much?"

The fence sucks air in through his teeth, which is, in Garrett's experience, a tell-tale sign that he's about to get ripped off. "We-ell, it's going to be a tricky thing to sell," he says. "The market for Mechanist gear is small. And getting smaller by the day, thanks to the Hammerites..."

" _How much_?"

He manages to get a good price for it in the end. Funny what a difference you can make with the merest shadow of a hint about what a terrible thing it would be for the fence if the Hammerites should happen to find out about him. It's a baseless threat -- Garrett's going nowhere near the Hammerites ever again if he can help it -- but that doesn't mean he can't use them as leverage in his negotiations.

Two days pass before the cherub finds him again.

Returning home from a job, he knows the instant he enters his apartment that something's off. Someone's tried to open the shutters. Dagger in hand, he edges to the window, where the off-kilter symmetry of his face is reflected in the glass, one eye glittering, the other dark, only it's not his face. It takes him a moment to realise, then he unsnaps the latch of the window and the cherub slips inside like a cat. He feels like he should pour it out a saucer of milk. If he had any milk.

"Rehoming loot," he says. "Nice."

And he sells it again, because what else is he going to do with it? The fence is even edgier this time, but he'd already sold it on, so he has no reason to complain.

"What do you care?" Garrett says. "You'll get your finder's fee. Again."

"You don't know these people. They're dangerous. Paranoid."

Garrett casts his gaze around the basement, at the metallic shutters bolted over the street-level windows, at the criss-crossing of copper wire, the home-brew security system crackling with power that makes his skin prickle. "Uh-huh. Well, if you don't think you can find another buyer--"

A hand clamps on his wrist. Garrett's gaze shifts to the fence, who lets go immediately and holds his hands up in apology. "Is it gonna run away again?"

Garrett shrugs. "Not my fault if your clients can't keep hold of their property."

 

***

 

He finds a new apartment at the edge of the wall in Stonemarket. It's smaller than the last place, but it seems comfortable enough. His old landlord is being difficult with Garrett's deposit, so Garrett breaks into his place before he leaves and strips it of everything of value. Considers it his leaving home present.

He's barely looked at the cutting since he threw it aside. Tries not to think about it, because every time he does, his chest twists so hard he can't breathe. For remembrances, the Pagan woman had said, as if she hadn't realised Viktoria was the last person he wanted to remember.

He almost leaves it behind, but at the last minute he fishes it out from under the table.

It's budded.

Tightly knotted furls of greenery have sprouted here and there along its length.

Viktoria's dead and gone, or so he'd thought, but now he's starting to wonder.

The new apartment overlooks what used to be a patch of wasteland where children would play until it was converted by the beneficence of Father Karras into a sculpture park. Now it's an expanse of landscaped metal, with lawns of galvanised steel ringing underfoot, rubberised paths, and a churning stream of chemically treated water that flows in an endless litter-clogged circle, pumped up to tumble down a waterfall of crystalline rocks.

Nothing grows there.

There are raised beds which had been filled with flowers when the park first opened, but now the servants which tended them are gone, the plants have died back, leaving barren empty soil. There's a grove of metal trees, with mechanised, clockwork branches that creak in a non-existent breeze, driven by the churning water. A willow stoops over the stream, its weeping catkins of glittering crystal wrapped with golden thread. And there's a rusting iron maze for children to get lost in, if children ever played there any more.

It's all overlooked by a plinth where a statue of Karras once stood, and which now stands empty.

The apartment came cheap -- the iron trees cast creeping shadows across the walls and gave the children of the last inhabitants nightmares, and none of them could sleep at night because of the noise Karras's children made.

"Can't blame 'em, to be honest with you," the landlord says, scratching his balls through his pocket. "Bleeding nightmare, they were. 'Praise Karras' this, and 'the Builder' that, all the poxy hours of the night until the rain got into them, and then they was _worse_. Taffing things never bloody shut up." He shoots a nervous glance at Garrett. "Not that I'm a heretic, mind you," he adds hastily, in a way that suggests he absolutely is. No one's quite certain what counts as heresy these days.

"At least the Hammerites sleep occasionally," Garrett says, and the landlord grins in relief. Garrett's already starting to like him, which isn't a good sign. It'll only mean he has to move on sooner. "What about the cesspits?"

"Oh well," the landlord says, vaguely. "You know how it is. Not too bad. Not too bad at all. " And he knocks another ten percent off the rent without having to be asked.

 

***

 

Clouds of vapour gather around the streetlights in Stonemarket, accompanied by an electric buzz Garrett can just hear beneath the ceaseless drumming of the rain on the canopies of the market stalls. A hot puff of steam rises up from his cup of hot chocolate, which he brings to his mouth, savouring the bittersweet smell of it, so strong he can already almost taste it. This first, he's thinking, then something from the hog roast stall, a roll packed with roast pork and pickled cabbage and apple sauce, shards of crackling that flood his mouth with hot oil when he crunches into them. His stomach's already growling at the thought.

The sky is bruised with rain clouds, but the clouds are ragged and torn, allowing sunlight to pierce through. In the shifting light, he sees a building in the skyline, one that wasn't there a moment ago.

Trick of the light. Except it's not.

Like the figure in his peripheral vision, watching him. Garrett's grip tightens around the hot chocolate. His hunger recedes. He wasn't really hungry in the first place. It was an illusion, like the vanishing building.

"You've stopped using your eye." Artemus's voice is soft, weary.

"I use it. On jobs." _When I need to._ He lifts the chocolate to his mouth, takes the first sip. There's a lingering bitter edge to the sweetness.

Artemus has bought Garrett another book, another leather-bound tome of barely coherent prophecies and glyphs, which they both know Garrett will add to the unread pile he hauls around with him from tenement to tenement. Something else he ought to burn.

The silence stretches on. It unnerves most people. It's one of the tools of his trade, alongside his bow, his collection of arrows, his lockpicks. But it never did work on Artemus, who has known him longer than anyone else and has the knack of turning it back on him, like a dagger wrested from his hand.

Well, maybe there's another way to put the Keeper off-balance.

"Could Viktoria come back?"

In the corner of his eye, he sees Artemus turn his head to look at him. Garrett hadn't even known he was going to ask the question, but he thinks there must be a reason why the Keeper is here. Under his fingers, he feels the muscle-memory of those unyielding green buds. He didn't imagine them.

"No," Artemus says.

Which isn't the answer Garrett was expecting, although it might be the answer he was hoping for.

He brings the chocolate to his lips again, lets the sour-bitter flavour flood his mouth, coating his lips, his teeth, his tongue.

Back when he was a boy, when he'd first fallen in with the Keepers, the first place Artemus led him to was a coffeehouse. Garrett had trailed behind, curious but still wary, ready to bolt at any moment. It's long gone now, that coffeehouse, burnt out in the Clemency Day riots, but back then it was busy and raucous, crowded with men arguing about the topics of the day.

Garrett had ordered a coffee, because he'd never tasted it, and he was curious, but the moment it arrived, he knew it was a mistake -- it was black and thick as mud, a tarry substance in a doll-sized cup. He tried to take a sip anyway, found it gritty and rancid, and his empty gut twisted in resentful envy when he smelled Artemusâ€™s hot chocolate.

Without a word Artemus had switched the cups around, sliding the hot chocolate across the table, and accepting Garrett's coffee for himself. And even so Garrett had stirred the chocolate and held off from drinking. His voice was as sour and bitter as the coffee: "I'm not going anywhere with you."

"I understand."

And the baited trap had snapped shut.

There's no such thing as safety in numbers. Maybe there is for the ones who are strong already, but for the weak ones, the ones who aren't fast enough or strong enough or vicious enough, safety is an illusion. They're the ones who get picked off one by one, while the stronger, faster, crueller ones dance out of reach and shrug their shoulders, thanking whatever god they serve that it wasn't them. If you're weak you're better off alone.

But if it hadn't been for the Keepers, he wouldn't be the man he is today, that's for certain. They hadn't quite taught him everything he knows; rather they'd taken his natural talents and honed them, but without them he'd have met his end at the end of the guillotine, or worse -- finished his life as one of Karras's servants, doomed to serve the bastard in the empty sterile paradise that he'd created.

_Walk away_ , he thinks. The door between them that Artemus speaks of, he needs to slam it shut once and for all. If he goes back to them, they'll never let him leave a second time. But he can't keep quiet.

"It says that in your books? That she can't come back?"

"She's dead, Garrett. I'm sorry. Do you wish otherwise?"

His teeth clamp together. Artemus's question is gentle, but as probing as the finger Garrett pokes up underneath the eyepatch to scratch at his socket. He does it deliberately, pointedly. If it wasn't for the Keepers he'd still have both his eyes. "She owed me," he says, and it's as close to the truth as he can get.

Another silence. In a flash of lightning a shape perched on the nearby building is illuminated, perched on a ledge like a golden gargoyle.

"It seems you have a follower," Artemus says mildly.

"It won't leave me alone." And it's not the only one. He downs the rest of the chocolate, flings the cup aside. The cherub climbs down the rest of the way and capers out of sight down an alley.

"Perhaps you should hand it over to the Hammerites and let them deal with it."

"The Hammerites won't pay me."

He takes the book, if for no other reason than it's old and valuable. He won't sell it though. Won't read it either. He'd like that to be an end to it, but Artemus follows him.

"There'll always be a place for you with us, Garrett. If you change your mind."

That's what he's afraid of.

The cherub clambers into his arms like a monkey and he tugs his cloak over it to hide it from view. When he glances back the Keeper is gone.

 

***

 

"No chance," the fence says, and this time he means it. He offers to take it off Garrett's hands for the scrap value, but the price he names is so ridiculous Garrett would have laughed in his face if he was in the mood, and never mind that he's already been paid twice over. Anything else should be a bonus.

So now he's stuck with the cherub in his cramped apartment, which seems a lot less comfortable than heâ€™d thought. As much as he'd smiled at the thought of nightmares, those shadows cast across the walls by the iron trees really do look like claws.

They make him dream of Viktoria, powerful, mercurial, tricksy Viktoria, enemy and ally both. At night he wakes, gasping and breathless, from dreams of his body wrapped in vines so tight he cannot breathe, or of being impaled on the branches of a tree in her grove. Her fingers lengthen, sharpen. Her nails hook like thorns, prick at the tender skin of his eyelid as her vines hold him fast. Ripping, tearing...

This night Karras is there too, ready and waiting to pump molten metal into the gaping wound that used to be his eye. Tendrils of metal wind through Garrettâ€™s veins, burrow through flesh and muscle, searing it away until there's nothing left of him but bone, and then not even that. The mask comes last, and Karras places it so carefully, so gently, over what's left of his skull, making him whole again. And as Viktoria kisses his cold metal lips, her vines tighten around him until he wakes, hard and hungry and terrified, with full daylight streaming through the flimsy makeshift curtains.

He feels metal against his skin, warmed by the heat of his body, and he recoils to find the cherub has crawled into bed beside him, like a child waking early and creeping into its parents' bed.

Repelled, he throws himself out of bed, the cold kiss of the air against his sweat-drenched skin. The cherub's single eye focuses reproachfully in on him.

He's frozen for a moment, staring down at it. Then he turns, fetches his tools. Ignores how it clings to him as he drags it from the bed. He's done with this. He should have sold it to the fence after all. Time to strip it down to scrap, get whatever value he can from its constituent parts. His own face is reflected in the cherub's mask, overlaid on its features and distorted. He's not seen himself in a while. Never really got into the habit of looking too closely at his reflection because he doesn't always like what he sees staring back at him.

With a twist of his wrist he removes the last screw. He sets the chest-piece aside.

There's a body inside the cherub. A torso with grey skin the colour of a healing bruise. The stark shadows of ribs are clearly delineated. Skin clings tight to bone, fat and muscle long wasted away. It's the torso of a child, maybe no more than three or four, although it could be older, stunted by starvation.

His eye flits to the cherub's. It tilts its head, and lifts its hand to his face. He flinches, but it only very gently nips his nose between the knuckles of its metal hand.

_Got your nose_.

It's the gesture of a child, because that's exactly what the cherub is.

He shoves away from the table, turns his back on it. Crosses to the window, then stops, turns back, pushing his hand through his hair. The cherub's watching him, and he feels the urge to say something to it, although he has no idea what he could say.

Sorry doesn't seem like enough, and he's not sure it's capable of understanding anyway.

He wishes the damn thing would leave him alone. Imprinting on him because he was the one stupid enough to pull it from the muck. He should have let the river wash it out to sea after all.

A City child. No parents, no one to take care of it. Just a kid who'd never really had a chance.

He puts the child back together again. No idea what he's going to do about it, but he can't bear to see that naked shrunken chest bared any longer. It's safer beneath its golden cage.

 

***

 

He'd thought about killing Viktoria himself once. In the early days of their alliance, when he'd been forced to set his own personal resentment aside, promising himself he'd deal with their unfinished business when it was all done, when Karras was finished. Only then she'd gone and robbed him of the chance.

And even then rage tangled with hurt in his chest, because he still remembered the way she'd looked at him that first time she'd ever come to his apartment with her eyes and heart as shuttered as his, and hadn't he thought there was something there, a glitter in her eyes as she crooked her finger? Not just the promise of a well-paying job, but something else?

_He's crazy,_ her eyes told him, as she echoed Constantine's words. _Humour the fool. There'll be money in this for you, if you're smart enough to play your cards right. Maybe more than just coin too._

Her smile. Her eyes. He should have known it was just a mask. Should have known it wasn't Constantine those eyes and smile were mocking, but him.

It had been too damn long.

That's the trouble with being a thief: sometimes you're the target. You're the idiot with the assets that make other people's palms itch.

To manipulate a man you only ever have to know what drives him, and the trouble with Garrett is he's simpler than he'd like to think. It's hunger at the heart of him; always has been, always will be, and not just the terror of starvation that he'll never be able to truly shake. There's an empty hollow feeling in his belly he can never quite fill.

Here's a carrot, idiot thief. Do you want it? Are you hungry? Go and get it then, and tell yourself you're fetching it for yourself, for the lovely glittery shinesy coinses it'll earn you. Sit up, prick your ears, wag your tail, roll over. Bare your belly, and that's a _good_ little puppy; only makes it easier for us to rip your precious little heart right out of your chest.

Or your eye. Or whatever part of your anatomy we choose because you're _ours_.

Viktoria's gone. She's not coming back. It's one last gift she gave him, a reminder of why he always prefers to work alone. It took her two tries in the end, but he's finally got the message. Other people have an inconvenient habit of betraying you, and even when they don't they go and die on you instead. A far worse kind of betrayal.

He takes the cutting down to the barren park. The willow tree rustles as he passes it, the wind whistling tunelessly through the quivering catkins. His footsteps sound too loud, but there's no one here to hear them. He's alone.

Except for the cherub, which climbs its way onto the plinth where the statue of Karras once stood. It watches him bury the cutting in the barren flowerbed and pat the damp earth flat around it.

She's gone. She's not coming back.

But maybe she'll take root here anyway, or part of her will, burrowing down past the sterile soil of the bed and into the earth itself. She'll work living tendrils through steel and iron, forcing them like weeds through cracks and crevices, until the metal trees of Karras's mockery of a grove rust and warp. Until something is growing here. Something real.

If anyone can do it, it's her.

 

 

 

 


End file.
